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Jeremy Citrome employs the language of contemporary psychoanalysis to explain how surgical metaphors became an important tool of ecclesiastical power in the wake of the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215. Pastoral, theological, recreational, and medical writings are among the texts discussed in this wide-ranging study.

'Citrome leaves almost no leaf unturned in this comprehensive exploration of surgery in medical and religious writings of later medieval England. His delineation of the concurrent development of the new view of surgery and the emphasis on personal penitence in the centuries following the Fourth Lateran Council is very compelling, as is his argument for the metaphorical significance of surgery in penitential treatises. His re-interpretations of Cleanness, Siege of Jerusalem, and John Audelay's poems are provocative, to say the least, and demand a reconsideration of their artistry. This book should make us all more conscious of how contemporary medicine understanding influenced both the assumptions of and forms of expression in Middle English literature.' - George R. Keiser, Professor of English, Kansas State University; author of The Middle English 'Boke of Stones': The Southern Version (1984) and A Manual of the Writings in Middle English, 1050-1500, Vol. 10: Science and Information (1998)

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